Taglines: The game has evolved.
Jumanji, the magical board game and the ancient portal to its fearsome and savage jungles, gets an upgrade, and this time, lures a motley crew of four high-school teenagers into its realm when one of them stumbles upon an old-school video game console. Inevitably, as the unwitting players transform into their chosen game avatars inside a mysterious new world crawling with formidable adversaries, they will have to put to good use their newly-acquired skills to finally complete the game. The deep sound of the feral tribal drums is incessant. Can the quirky quartet return to the physical world in one piece?
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg, and Jeff Pinkner, from a story by McKenna. It is the second installment in the Jumanji franchise, based on the 1981 children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg and serves as a stand-alone sequel to Jumanji (1995). The film also makes a tribute to Robin Williams, star of the original film, with a carving of his character’s name. The film stars Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, and Bobby Cannavale. The film was released in Real D 3D and IMAX.
Principal photography began on September 19, 2016, in Honolulu, Hawaii, primarily taking place in the Kualoa Ranch private nature reserve. The film was then wrapped on December 8, 2016, in Atlanta, Georgia. In August 2015, Sony set the film a release date of December 25, 2016. As filming did not start until September 2016, the release was pushed back a year to July 28, 2017, and then to December 20, 2017.
About the Story
In 1996, in Brantford, New Hampshire, about a year after the events of the previous movie, teenager Alex Vreeke receives the Jumanji board game, found by his father on a beach. When Alex claims to himself that board games are boring, the game, seeing Alex’s interest in video games, magically transforms into a video game cartridge which catches Alex’s attention the next morning. As he plays it he is teleported into the game.
Twenty years later in 2016, four students in Brantford High School are placed in detention together: Spencer Gilpin, who was caught writing essays for his former friend, Anthony “Fridge” Johnson, who is also in detention for the plagiarism, Bethany Walker, and Martha Kaply, who have both disrespected their respective teachers during class.
Bethany made a phone call in the middle of class and refused to end it after being ordered to by her English teacher, and Martha refused to join in on P.E. class because she considered it useless and made it worse by insulting the teacher. They were ridiculed for their actions and are assigned by the school’s principal to clear out its basement. While cleaning the four find Jumanji, a multiplayer action-adventure video game. One of the playable (video game avatars) is inaccessible. When Spencer hits Start, the four are sucked into the game.
They find themselves in a jungle each now in the forms of their game avatars. Spencer is a tough, muscular explorer named Dr. Smolder Bravestone, Fridge is a short zoologist named Franklin “Mouse” Finbar whom he had selected upon misreading the name as “Moose,” Martha is a gorgeous commando and martial arts expert named Ruby Roundhouse, and Bethany is an overweight, male cartographer named Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon. They soon realize that they are in a video game and each have three lives. If they lose all three, Spencer concludes they die for real. Each of their avatars also comes with special skills and weaknesses.
They learn from Nigel, an NPC guide, that the big-game hunter, Russel Van Pelt, wants to obtain a jewel, the “Jaguar’s Eye,” allowing him to manipulate Jumanji’s animals. To escape the game, the players must return it to an enormous jaguar statue and call out “Jumanji”. Along the way the group begins to lose lives through various means when completing game levels.
The group starts working together to obtain a clue from a snake but are cornered by Van Pelt’s men. They are rescued by Alex, the fifth player, whose avatar is a pilot named Jefferson “Seaplane” McDonough. Recuperating in a tree house built by previous player Alan Parrish, the main character from Jumanji, the newcomers vow to help him return home. Alex, thinking he’d only been in the game for a few months, learns that he has been in the game for twenty years. The group works together to break into a transportation shed, commandeer a helicopter, and fly for the jaguar statue to return the jewel.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Rhys Darby, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, Marin Hinkle, Mason Guccione, Tracey Bonner, Alex Wolff
Screenplay by: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
Production Design by: Owen Paterson
Cinematography by: Gyula Pados
Film Editing by: Steve Edwards, Mark Helfrich
Costume Design by: Laura Jean Shannon
Set Decoration by: Ronald R. Reiss
Art Direction by: Steve Cooper, Hugo Santiago
Music by: Henry Jackman
MPAA Rating:
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 20, 2017
